"Although Diamond (pp. 38-40) acknowledges the accumulating evidence in favor of the "Out-of-Africa" theory of human origins that Homo sapiens arose in Africa 200,000 years ago, expanded beyond Africa in an African/non-African split about 110,000 years ago, and then migrated east in a European/East Asian split about 40,000 years ago, he refuses to acknowledge any relationship between this evolutionary sequence and the parallel ranking of Africans, Europeans, and East Asians in brain size and other behavioral traits. Nor does he tell his readers that evolutionary selection pressures were different in the hot savanna where Africans evolved than in the cold Arctic where East Asians evolved."

Jared Diamond is Jewish. He has commented on articles that show the superiority of Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence, while in his book, "Guns, Germs, and Steel," he states that Europeans are inferior to Papua New Guinians.

Diamond pointed out in 1994 that one possible explanation for these Ashkenazi hereditary diseases is:

"selection in Jews for the intelligence putatively required to survive recurrent persecution, and also to make a living by commerce, because Jews were barred from the agricultural jobs available to the non-Jewish population."

Hmm, talmudic double standard as usual...

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On page 21 of his book, Guns, Germs and Steel, he states that, "in mental ability, New Guinians are probably genetically superior to Westerners..." HAHAHA, a laughable quote...

I know, I'm mean...

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Don't pay attention to his book, Gun, Germs, and Steel. It is garbage.

Don't throw it in the dustbin. One day you could run out of wood for the chimney...

I saw a movie made by the book on history channel. The real thing is that...
Europeans did use guns and could work with steel becuse they were smarter and superior. Nowhere in the world had such tehnology as the europeans becuse they we're asians and nigers their brains are smaller so they had no guns no steel. Until the european colonisation to Africa and New-Guinena and other similar places the natives we're still in the stone age. Using stone tools. Europeans did all the world a favor with bringing the tehnology to them! If Europeans wouldn't have left Europe. The africans would still be in the stoneage. Africa would collapse if EU, UNICEF and NATO would stop sending food and troops there! I don't get it. Why do we help these people. So they could spread AIDS?

I read the book and watched the accompanying mini -series and found most of it to be nothing but an African excuse exercise but, I do agree with JJT that there is some significance in his germ theory. I remember one of the more ridiculous parts of the series where he accompanies some bush people as they made a hut out of logs and lashed it together with some intertwined bark peels and made a statement along the lines of "I could not do this I doubt many Europeans could do this this just proves how the Africans are more advanced". It made me think of when I was a child and how me and my friends would make tree forts that where far more structurally sound and better engineered than the hut the adult Africans built. At that point his argument went from ridiculous to absurd.

Well, of course Jared can't do that--he's a Jewish Boston Brahmin sybarite. He can't build a damn hut. He probably doesn't know how to unclog his toilet when his maid Carmen isn't around.

That said--there may be useful data in Diamond's book, although I haven't read it. I've flipped through it, and didn't see much of what looked like authentic, peer-reviewed analysis of the data.

You know how Creationists are always saying "Darwin is a theory, not a fact?" Well, what they mean is that "Darwinism" is a hypothesis, an educated guess. Darwinism is actually much more than a hypothesis, but that's not the point I want to make. "Guns, Germs, and Steel"--now THAT is a hypothesis, and it's a hypothesis that's deliberately missing some data, e.g., intelligence differences.

Are we to believe that brain size, which is the determinant of evolution, suddenly ceases to be relevant with 'human beings'?

Go by the skull structure, the frontal lobes, and truth shall be revealed to you.

Natives of Papua New Guinea are inferior to Indonesians who are inferior to Cantonese who are inferior to north Chinese (on average), etc.. and brain size, and the resulting achievements, are the determinant of this. The peoples of Papua New Guinea have small brains, as do Australian Aboriginals and sub-Saharan Africans. Accordingly, they have achieved little. They have not progressed, in any way, in tens of thousands of years.

Are we to believe that brain size, which is the determinant of evolution, suddenly ceases to be relevant with 'human beings'?

Go by the skull structure, the frontal lobes, and truth shall be revealed to you.

Natives of Papua New Guinea are inferior to Indonesians who are inferior to Cantonese who are inferior to north Chinese (on average), etc.. and brain size, and the resulting achievements, are the determinant of this. The peoples of Papua New Guinea have small brains, as do Australian Aboriginals and sub-Saharan Africans. Accordingly, they have achieved little. They have not progressed, in any way, in tens of thousands of years.

I think that what it counts is the ratio brain/body speaking about size and the development of the areas of the brain concerning rational thought (some other spieces have the brain area concerning the smell or other senses much more developed than ours). However I think that you're right: if the ratio brain/body size is smaller for primitive race and the frontal lobes are less developed, then that could be the explanation.

Hart's book serves as a comprehensive refutation of Guns, Germs, and Steel. It’s an impressive and insightful attempt to provide a more careful and powerful answer to Diamond's question about why some peoples came to rule other peoples.

Unlike Diamond, Hart is also interested in a second, less bloodthirsty question: who gave what to the entire human race in terms of science, technology, and the arts.

This is a fascinating topic—but one that the Diamonds of the world shy away from, since measuring contributions rather than conquests don't present an opportunity for the competitive moralism, the public white-guilt breast-beating afforded by the European expansion of 1400-1900.

Over the same period, as everyone knows deep down, virtually every advance that is now the shared patrimony of humanity was made by Europeans or their offshoots. These days, that’s a rather inconvenient truth.

The premise of this book, that everything is just an accident, is fatally flawed. There ARE genetic differences in IQ and predisposed behavior. To think otherwise ignores the facts.

I do agree that it's quite possible that if Columbus hadn't discovered America, that someone else would have at the same time. But it wouldn't have been an African. It would have been someone from a superior western society.

But the idea that a lot of history is driven by pure chance is something we should all understand

Yes, and fate did indeed smile on whites in many ways, we're very very lucky to be what we are. And I suppose in that sense, it was accidental-- our forebears were "lucky" enough to move to extremes of cold, and so on and so on.

I did think much of the actual history in the book was very interesting, but I disagreed in some sense with the ultimate conclusion that he seems to be drawing.